... but the monster won’t go away
Singling out Rabin's killer won't make "Israel's" other monsters go away
Source: Daily Star, 01-10-2008
The 'Israeli' establishment let forth a great collective bleat on Friday, roundly condemning two television stations for having finagled an interview with the jailed assassin of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a newspaper for having published excerpts of what the killer, Yigal Amir, had to say. As if by rote, politicians left, right and center spoke as one to express their disapproval of the murderer, his crime, and anyone who would give him a platform to join public discourse.
Their mission: to paint Amir, his views and his resort to political violence as aberrations. But the fact that 'Israel's' political elites were so united in their expressions of outrage does nothing to negate the continuing existence of a deeply troubling phenomenon in the Zionist state: Having been inculcated since 1948 with mutually reinforcing senses of entitlement, impunity and racial superiority, many 'Israelis' are anything but the civilized and peace-loving people publicly dreamed of by their political leaders. In fact, in rhetoric, temperament and worldview, an uncomfortable number of them resemble nothing so much as Nazis.
Evidence for this was not difficult to find in the reaction to Amir's interview. To punish him for having granted the interview without first obtaining permission, 'Israel's' penal authorities announced several steps. No longer will he be allowed certain privileges, including the telephone calls that he used to do the interview and the visits from his wife that allowed him to impregnate her while in custody. And, for good measure, the only man ever to have assassinated an 'Israeli' prime minister is being moved to a higher-security prison in a more remote location, one so onerous in its conditions, in fact, that ordinarily it is used to hold Palestinians. In other words, the harshest punishment that 'Israeli' authorities can mete out to a murderer who happens to be a Jew is to give him a small taste of how they treat those they regard as sub-humans. He will not get the full dose, of course: His right to a trial has already been met, for instance, and his wife and child will neither be incarcerated nor made homeless for having been associated with him.
Not all 'Israelis' are in denial about what lurks beneath the surface of their society. The reminders are too frequent and too frightening, and not all of them come from the fanatical colonists who populate Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank. Not content to have usurped another people's land, the latter have recently stepped up their efforts to keep the dispossessed from harvesting their crops on what remains of their birthright. In addition, recently someone tried to collect a bounty put on the head of a prominent critic of the colonization movement.
Spokespeople for the 'Israeli' military make a point of emphasizing its official disapproval of such activities, but it does almost nothing to stop them. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - one of the loudest voices at all times anywhere but particularly when the far right in 'Israel' was tarring Rabin as a traitor in the months leading up to his assassination - remains unrepentant and very much in the running to get his old job back.
Despite all the evidence staring it in the face, the 'Israeli' establishment prefers to seek comfort in a few familiar myths. But looking the other way will not cure the creeping radicalization that has been under way for years, no more than it shielded Rabin when Amir strolled through a phalanx of the vaunted Shin Bet's best bodyguards and emptied a pistol into his back.
Source: Daily Star, 01-10-2008
The 'Israeli' establishment let forth a great collective bleat on Friday, roundly condemning two television stations for having finagled an interview with the jailed assassin of late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and a newspaper for having published excerpts of what the killer, Yigal Amir, had to say. As if by rote, politicians left, right and center spoke as one to express their disapproval of the murderer, his crime, and anyone who would give him a platform to join public discourse.
Their mission: to paint Amir, his views and his resort to political violence as aberrations. But the fact that 'Israel's' political elites were so united in their expressions of outrage does nothing to negate the continuing existence of a deeply troubling phenomenon in the Zionist state: Having been inculcated since 1948 with mutually reinforcing senses of entitlement, impunity and racial superiority, many 'Israelis' are anything but the civilized and peace-loving people publicly dreamed of by their political leaders. In fact, in rhetoric, temperament and worldview, an uncomfortable number of them resemble nothing so much as Nazis.
Evidence for this was not difficult to find in the reaction to Amir's interview. To punish him for having granted the interview without first obtaining permission, 'Israel's' penal authorities announced several steps. No longer will he be allowed certain privileges, including the telephone calls that he used to do the interview and the visits from his wife that allowed him to impregnate her while in custody. And, for good measure, the only man ever to have assassinated an 'Israeli' prime minister is being moved to a higher-security prison in a more remote location, one so onerous in its conditions, in fact, that ordinarily it is used to hold Palestinians. In other words, the harshest punishment that 'Israeli' authorities can mete out to a murderer who happens to be a Jew is to give him a small taste of how they treat those they regard as sub-humans. He will not get the full dose, of course: His right to a trial has already been met, for instance, and his wife and child will neither be incarcerated nor made homeless for having been associated with him.
Not all 'Israelis' are in denial about what lurks beneath the surface of their society. The reminders are too frequent and too frightening, and not all of them come from the fanatical colonists who populate Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank. Not content to have usurped another people's land, the latter have recently stepped up their efforts to keep the dispossessed from harvesting their crops on what remains of their birthright. In addition, recently someone tried to collect a bounty put on the head of a prominent critic of the colonization movement.
Spokespeople for the 'Israeli' military make a point of emphasizing its official disapproval of such activities, but it does almost nothing to stop them. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - one of the loudest voices at all times anywhere but particularly when the far right in 'Israel' was tarring Rabin as a traitor in the months leading up to his assassination - remains unrepentant and very much in the running to get his old job back.
Despite all the evidence staring it in the face, the 'Israeli' establishment prefers to seek comfort in a few familiar myths. But looking the other way will not cure the creeping radicalization that has been under way for years, no more than it shielded Rabin when Amir strolled through a phalanx of the vaunted Shin Bet's best bodyguards and emptied a pistol into his back.
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